The Cries of London: Exhibiting Several of the Itinerant Traders of Antient and Modern TimesSmith, John Thomas
History
The Cries of London: Exhibiting Several of the Itinerant Traders of Antient and Modern Times
Smith, John Thomas
Cries -- England -- London; London (England) -- Social life and customs -- Illustrations; Peddling -- England -- London
When they meet with a clay that differs in colour from that they have been
using, they will apply themselves most readily to make up a batch of
plates, basins, or tea-cups, well knowing the public are pleased with a
new colour; and it is a curious fact that there are hundreds of varieties
of tints produced from the different pits used by these Staffordshire
manufactories. There are men whose business it is to glaze the articles,
and others who pencil and put on the brown or white enamel with which the
common yellow jug is streaked or ornamented. In the brown or yellow baking
dishes used by the common people, the dabs of colour of brown and yellow
are laid on by children, with sticks, in the quickest way imaginable. The
profits of earthen-ware in general are very great, as indeed they ought to
be, considering the brittleness of the article, and the number of
accidents they are continually meeting with, as is demonstrated by their
hedge-rows and roads.
An article that is sold for fourpence in London, costs but one penny at
the manufactory.
[Illustration: _Hard Metal Spoons_]
HARD METAL SPOONS TO SELL OR CHANGE.
PLATE XX.
William Conway, of Crab Tree Row, Bethnall Green, is the person from whom
the following etching was made. He was born in 1752, in Worship Street,
which spot was called Windmill Hill, and first started with or rather
followed his father as an itinerant trader, forty-seven years ago. This
man has walked on an average twenty-five miles a day six days in the week,
never knew a day's illness, nor has he once slept out of his own bed. His
shoes are made from the upper leather of old boots, and a pair will last
him six weeks. He has eleven walks, which he takes in turn, and these are
all confined to the environs of London; no weather keeps him within, and
he has been wet and dry three times in a day without taking the least
cold.
His spoons are made of hard metal, which he sells, or exchanges for the
old ones he had already sold; the bag in which he carries them is of the
thickest leather, and he has never passed a day without taking some money.
His eyes are generally directed to the ground, and the greatest treasure
he ever found was a one pound note; when quarters of guineas were in
currency, he once had the good fortune to pick up one of them.
He never holds conversation with any other itinerant, nor does he drink
but at his dinner; and it is pleasant to record, that Conway in his walks,
by his great regularity, has acquired friends, several of whom employ him
in small commissions.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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